DOOMSDAY HIVE
A distant, isolated colony of robot labourers race to survive a destructive solar flare and impending conflict with their human caretakers. This work of fiction may contain strong content and glaring scientific inaccuracies.
PART ONE
THE X41 WAVE
CHAPTER ONE
Painfully engorged with more than a day’s worth of crop, gathered painstakingly from the tangled alien landscape of the planet Arles below, the queen hummed contentedly on an intuitive aerial path back to her bustling hive. Behind her, a cloud of worker drones followed at a protective, but respectful, distance in obedient formation.
One drone in particular, however, was failing.
Not so coincidentally, it was also the only drone yet to have delivered its valuable payload.
“Should I open the hold and let them come inside?” Said the cargo brat, into the ship’s intercom.
Cargo brats, a familiar presence on every harvester queen in the fleet, were generally the children of the hive’s human administration body, put into service early for work experience. It provoked their naturally-immature outlook and demeanour into something resembling real maturity, while also teaching them a valuable trade. In most cases of this arrangement, the brats became accepted, by the robot labour body onboard, as their ship’s plucky mascot.
There was a meaningful crackle of static from the intercom in response to this particular brat’s query.
“Sammy, who’s drone is that?!” Came the irritable reply.
The cargo brat turned back to his monitor and quickly registered the trailing drone’s markings.
“Verity Maroon’s, captain. It’s the Ponsonby.”
“‘Pit Pony’!” Said a third voice, barking from somewhere on the hold’s master control panel. “I refuse to use its official designation! I’ve told you this before, Sammy!”
The cargo brat rolled his eyes and turned back to the intercom.
“Did you hear that, captain?” He said, idly rubbing a smudge of accumulating dirt from the bulkhead next to him.
A meaningful burst of static came from the intercom panel.
Then another irritated reply.
“Fine, but refuse tethering. They’ve got to do it manually.” Said the captain. “Perhaps Maroon will learn her lesson, this time.”
Sammy released the intercom and turned to begin lowering the hold’s ramp for the Ponsonby to enter.
“Oh and Sammy!” Said the captain, as parenthesis.
“Yes, captain?” Said the boy, rubbing his closely shaven head.
“You are not to help her, do you understand me?!”
“I understand, captain. And I shan’t.”
The intercom clicked off again.
“Captain?” Said Sammy, testing whether he could still be heard by his superior. Once he was satisfied that communication had been safely lost, he said, in his cracked but high-pitched breath: “Bitch.”
There was suddenly a tremendous groan, as the queen came under a great force from outside. Sammy sprang up on tiptoes to inspect the monitors on the central control panel. It seemed the Ponsonby was experiencing navigation problems and unable to keep a stable course so close to the queen. While not making terminal contact, the air pressure between both vessels was now dense enough to have a negative effect on both.
The external communicator crackled.
“I’m running out of time out here, Sammy. What’s the word?!” Said Verity, a sense of impending doom underlying her taut professionalism.
Sammy sighed and cranked open the cargo door, revealing the swarm of drones on the queen’s tail.
“Pit Pony, you are to delivery your payload manually. There certainly will not be an emergency tether released to port where external security cameras are currently unresponsive.” Said Sammy, reassignment and being grounded by his parents surely in his very near future.
“Thanks, Sammy.” Said Verity, suddenly at peace with herself, while heavy hydraulic grinding could be heard in the background over the communicator.
Onboard the United Arles Astral Bodies (UAAB) Licensed Harvesting Vessel Ponsonby or, more colloquially, “The Pit Pony”, or simply “The Pony” in emergencies, there was a frenzied lack of activity. The ship’s pilot, Verity Maroon, along with her co-pilot, a stocky robot designated “Amsterdam Vallone”, were focussing all their synthetic attention on three key events: the movement of their drone the Pony, the movement of the massive queen beyond, and the movement of the turbulent air between them.
“Where is it?!” Said Amsterdam, his hands hovering over the grappling station. “I can’t see any emergency tether!”
“It’ll come.” Said Verity, as a hatch, flush against the port hull of the queen, slid back and ejected a tethering line.
“There he is. Nice one, Sammy!” Said Verity, stomping down on the drone’s accelerator, while fighting the routinely damaged steering hydraulics.
The community of robot labourers around Arles were capable of achieving greater-than-human strength and agility, but an internal impedance node countered this, as a general rule. Apparently on health and safety grounds. However, under certain conditions defined by the robot programmers back on Earth, full use of the robots’ mechanical force could be authorised and subsequently undertaken.
This was one of those conditions.
“Impedance receded.” Said Verity, industrial lubricant boiling from her straining joints.
Amsterdam nodded. “Yeah, I heard.” He said, attempting to keep control of the grappling arm that now protruded from the forehead of the Ponsonby’s bow.
The robot community also had the ability to communicate instantaneously as part of a collective consciousness, but, much like their strength, and out of respect to the humans they would often find themselves working alongside, this hive mind was also impeded, unless certain conditions arose.
This too was one of those conditions.
Through the exterior arm, Amsterdam was able to tether the Ponsonby to the queen and reel the two closer together. As the drone hovered closer alongside the queen, the two robots in the cockpit were able see the cargo brat waving to them from his control panel, to which he also was carefully tethered. Verity waved back, then counted down in exaggerated movement with her fingers from five. Sammy nodded in confirmation.
Just then, Verity shuddered as a loud mechanical crack deafened the cockpit. She spun around and saw Amsterdam’s grapple controlling arm rip clear away from his torso. His resulting scream sliced open his human voice simulator and let loose a burst of computerised squealing.
The Ponsonby lurched forward, on its side, and crashed into the cargo hold of the queen. Verity wrenched out a lever, which released the drone’s payload onto the magnetised ramp of the queen’s hold.
“Well, that was a close one!” Said Sammy, now within spitting distance of the Ponsonby’s windshield, while also being able to be heard, quite clearly, by the drone’s terror-struck pilot and amputated co-pilot.
Sammy took in the violent, mechanical mess.
“Oh, is he going to be alright?!”
Verity turned to Amsterdam, who was, with his left hand only, calmly flipping switches and retracting the grappling arm back into the bow.
“Sure, he’s going to be fine.” She said, turning back to the cargo brat and giving him a wink. “He’s had worse things ripped off him.”
Sammy smiled and, without breaking eye contact with the unkempt, albino-haired pilot of the Ponsonby, sent a payload conformation to the queen’s bridge.
“Are two lovebirds done?“ Said Amsterdam, while picking up the shards of his arm that had splintered off during its detachment.
Without a formal verbal or hive warning, and with a deep frown, the pilot pulled the steering lever back as far as it would go, throwing the drone off the queen’s cargo ramp and down into the dusty lower atmosphere of Arles. The laboriously collected mechanical splinters from Amsterdam’s severed arm went flying from his only functioning hand and fell, once more, about the Ponsonby cockpit.
